Martin Hägglund (born 23 November 1976) is a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

philosopher A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek th ...

and scholar of modernist literature. He is the Birgit Baldwin Professor of Humanities at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

. He is also a member of the

Harvard Society of Fellows The Society of Fellows is a group of scholars selected at the beginnings of their careers by Harvard University for their potential to advance academic wisdom, upon whom are bestowed distinctive opportunities to foster their individual and intell ...

, serving as a Junior Fellow from 2009 to 2012. Hägglund is the author of '' This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom'' (2019), ''Dying for Time: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov'' (2012), ''Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life'' (2008), and ''Kronofobi: Essäer om tid och ändlighet'' (''Chronophobia: Essays on Time and Finitude'', 2002). He was awarded a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 2018 and won the René Wellek Prize in 2020.

Works

''This Life'' (2019)

In '' This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom'' (2019), Hägglund pursues a critique of the religious ideal of eternity and reconceives faith in secular terms as the fundamental form of practical commitment. Through new interpretations of

G.W.F. Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends ...

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

, and Martin Luther King Jr., Hägglund develops the social and political stakes of his analysis of our temporal existence, arguing that labor under capitalism alienates us from our finite lifetime. Calling for a revaluation of our values, Hägglund presents a vision of democratic socialism as a post-capitalist form of life in which we could truly own our time and recognize our shared freedom.

''Dying for Time'' (2012)

''Dying for Time'' offers new readings of the problem of temporality in the writings of

Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust (; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, critic, and essayist who wrote the monumental novel ''In Search of Lost Time'' (''À la recherche du temps perdu''; with the previous Eng ...

Virginia Woolf Adeline Virginia Woolf (; ; 25 January 1882 28 March 1941) was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th-century authors and a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device. Woolf was born i ...

, and Vladimir Nabokov. Through an engagement with

Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...

and

Jacques Lacan Jacques Marie Émile Lacan (, , ; 13 April 1901 – 9 September 1981) was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Described as "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud", Lacan gave yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, and pu ...

, Hägglund also develops an original theory of the relation between time and desire ("chronolibido"), addressing mourning and melancholia, pleasure and pain, attachment and loss.

''Radical Atheism'' (2008)

''Radical Atheism'' is a major intervention in

deconstruction The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was introduced by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences w ...

, offering a novel account of

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida; See also . 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in numerous texts, and which was developed t ...

's thinking of time and space, life and death, good and evil, self and other. As Hägglund argues, all our commitments presuppose an investment in and care for finite life. Developing a deconstructive account of time, Hägglund shows how Derrida rethinks the constitution of identity, ethics, religion, and political emancipation in accordance with the condition of temporal finitude.

Bibliography

* '' This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom'', Pantheon Books, 2019. * ''Dying for Time: Proust, Woolf, Nabokov'', Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. * ''Radical Atheism: Derrida and the Time of Life'', Stanford: Stanford University Press, Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics, 2008. * ''Kronofobi: Essäer om tid och ändlighet'' (''Chronophobia: Essays on Time and Finitude''), Stockholm/Stehag: Brutus Östlings Bokförlag Symposion, 2002.

References

External links

Review of ''This Life'' in ''The New Yorker''Review of ''This Life'' in ''Radical Philosophy''Review of ''Dying for Time'' in ''Los Angeles Review of Books''Review of ''Radical Atheism'' and its reception in ''International Journal of Philosophical Studies''Review of ''This Life'' in ''The New Republic''Review of ''This Life'' in ''boundary 2''

Video recording of Hägglund and Derek Attridge on Radical Atheism at Oxford UniversitySymposium on ''This Life'' in ''Los Angeles Review of Books'' (2020)Response essay by Hägglund: "Marx, Hegel, and the Critique of Religion" (2021)Martin Hägglund’s website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hagglund, Martin Swedish literary scholars Literary theorists Deconstruction 1976 births Living people Cornell University people 21st-century Swedish philosophers Continental philosophers Atheist philosophers Harvard Fellows